One Song to the Tune of Another


"One Song to the Tune of Another" was the first game played on the BBC Radio 4 comedy panel game I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue and is still almost always played every other episode. It consists of panellists singing the lyrics of one song to the tune of another song, accompanied on the piano.
The four original panellists were adept at this game, and each took an individual turn. Since the death of Willie Rushton guest panellists have appeared, and the two team members occasionally sing together, presumably to compensate for the unsteadiness of a guest's voice. Guest panellists sometimes exhibit little or no musical talent - most notably the late Jeremy Hardy, whose dreadful attempts at singing were greatly anticipated by audiences - often to great comedic effect.
The panellists also sometimes impersonate a singer associated with one of the songs. In several episodes, Graeme Garden was given a song with a tune by Bob Dylan and not only impersonated him, but broke off into a harmonica solo. Notably "How much is that Doggy in the Window", to "Blowin' in the Wind".
The game has been played in several Christmas specials, and a variant was played in the 2007 special Humph In Wonderland, in which panellists sang a Lewis Carroll poem to the tune of a song. Tim Brooke-Taylor and Graeme Garden sang "Jabberwocky" to the tune of "Jerusalem", and Andy Hamilton and Rob Brydon sang "You Are Old, Father William" to the tune of "I Know Him So Well".
Occasionally, some of the panellists imitate backing singers for the panellist actually singing when there is a suitable gap in the song, such as one of the 2009 episodes hosted by Jack Dee, where Barry Cryer and Graeme Garden backed Tim Brooke-Taylor.

Songs used

Some of the humour derives from the incongruity caused by differences between the songs involved. They may differ wildly in genre, structure, tempo, and time signature, but unlikely combinations have sometimes worked surprisingly well. Having the same metre helps. Examples include:
A contribution to the effectiveness of the rendition is made by the pianist who, given the uneven rhythm of the vocalists, often has a much more difficult task than is usually required from an accompanist.

Introduction

Additional humour is derived from the manner in which the host introduces and explains the game. The concept is actually simple, and well described by the game's title, but the chairman claims it to be complex and proceeds to give a long-winded and complicated "simple" explanation, which differs each time the game is played. For example:
In later episodes of ISIHAC, these monologues generally took the form of contorted analogies, ending with an extremely contrived and obvious joke at Colin Sell's expense. For example, from June 2006:
Internet-based fans have taken the silliness a step further, in true ISIHAC style, by playing the game in text-based media, such as USENET and email. Liberal use of punctuation can give readers a hint of how the metre is being applied to the lyrics.

Similar examples from elsewhere

Members of the Barmy Army, devoted fans of the English cricket team, are known to mock Australian cricketers and fans by singing the Australian national anthem to the tune of the nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb", and vice versa.
The Australian television comedy programme The Money or the Gun featured a different artist performing "Stairway to Heaven" every week. The Beatnix performed it to the tune of "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" and "Twist and Shout". The B-52s tribute band The Rock Lobsters performed Stairway to the tune of "Rock Lobster". Elvis impersonator Neil Pepper performed it to the tune of "Viva Las Vegas".
The Australian television comedy programme Spicks and Specks features a segment "Substitute", where a panelist sings a well-known tune substituting words from an unrelated text, and the remaining team-mates attempt to guess the name of the song. The host, Adam Hills sang the Australian National Anthem to the tune of the rock and roll classic, "Working Class Man", in one case accompanied by the latter's singer, Jimmy Barnes. In a 2008 stand up comedy tour, Hills performed the Dutch national anthem "Het Wilhelmus" to the tune of "Bohemian Rhapsody".
The Scared Weird Little Guys, an Australian comedy duo, perform a similar vein of songs weekly on The Cage, the breakfast show on Triple M in Melbourne and Sydney. In their segment, "Stump the Scardies", listeners email in suggestions of songs to sing in another tune and the duo get about five minutes preparation time — usually just enough to find the guitar chords and lyrics online. This segment occurs weekly at 0845 AEST on Tuesdays.
In 1989 "Weird Al" Yankovic recorded "Money for Nothing/Beverly Hillbillies*", the lyrics of "The Ballad of Jed Clampett" to the music of the Dire Straits song "Money for Nothing".
A serious example of the principle behind this game was Cliff Richard's "Millennium Prayer", in which he sang the Lord's Prayer to the tune of "Auld Lang Syne". Also in recent popular culture bootlegging and bastard pop have taken this a step further, employing the practice of laying down vocals from one track over the music from another.
Both "The Star Spangled Banner" and "My Country, 'Tis of Thee" are examples of taking a song and writing new lyrics for the tune.